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arXiv · 2103.06713

Have I been here before? Learning to Close the Loop with LiDAR Data in Graph-Based SLAM

Tim-Lukas Habich·Marvin Stuede·Mathieu Labbé·Svenja Spindeldreier
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Abstract

This work presents an extension of graph-based SLAM methods to exploit the potential of 3D laser scans for loop detection. Every high-dimensional point cloud is replaced by a compact global descriptor, whereby a trained detector decides whether a loop exists. Searching for loops is performed locally in a variable space to consider the odometry drift. Since closing a wrong loop has fatal consequences, an extensive verification is performed before acceptance. The proposed algorithm is implemented as an extension of the widely used state-of-the-art library RTAB-Map, and several experiments show the improvement: During SLAM with a mobile service robot in changing indoor and outdoor campus environments, our approach improves RTAB-Map regarding total number of closed loops. Especially in the presence of significant environmental changes, which typically lead to failure, localization becomes possible by our extension. Experiments with a car in traffic (KITTI benchmark) show the general applicability of our approach. These results are comparable to the state-of-the-art LiDAR method LOAM. The developed ROS package is freely available.

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Tim-Lukas Habich, Marvin Stuede, Mathieu Labbé, Svenja Spindeldreier. 2021-03-11. Have I been here before? Learning to Close the Loop with LiDAR Data in Graph-Based SLAM. https://doi.org/10.1109/aim46487.2021.9517565

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